US Lawmakers Introduce Bills That Could Force Crypto Exchanges To Cut Ties With Russian Wallets

Representative Brad Sherman will introduce a bill in the House to target US companies that handle crypto transactions for Russian banks and individuals.

Sherman . spoke Thursday at a hybrid markup meeting with the House Financial Services Committee said he will introduce a bill accompanying Senator Elizabeth Warren’s legislation that would give the Biden administration “explicit authority to require crypto exchanges under US law to stop facilitating transactions with Russia-based crypto wallets.” .” warren first announced the legislation on March 8, later at a Senate Banking Committee hearing that she will table the bill on Thursday.

The text of neither bill is available through congressional proceedings at the time of publication. However, Warren’s proposed legislation would reportedly to give the Treasury Department has the power to stop crypto exchanges under US jurisdiction from processing transactions from crypto addresses belonging to Russian citizens. In addition, U.S. taxpayers should report all crypto transactions outside the country over $10,000 to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN.

†[I] look forward to working with my colleagues to ensure that one of the tools available to administration is the ability to tell crypto exchanges if they do business in the United States, they cannot do business with in Russia established crypto wallets until this crisis is over,” Sherman said.

Representative Brad Sherman addresses the House Financial Services Committee on Thursday

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Sherman, who has previously made several anti-crypto statements, including calling for a ban on digital assets, quoted Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation questioning for all exchanges “to block addresses of Russian users” ostensibly without limiting the ban to individuals and companies named in US and EU sanctions. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said the company would comply with sanctions but not block transactions related to all crypto wallets in Russia, while Kraken CEO Jesse Powell said there should be a legal requirement for the exchange to freeze Russian accounts.

“We are not going to unilaterally freeze the accounts of millions of innocent users,” a Binance spokesperson told Coin-Crypto in February. “Crypto aims to bring greater financial freedom to people around the world.”

Michael Chobanian, the founder of the Kuna crypto exchange in Ukraine, said by Thursday, the platform had halted “all support for the Russian ruble”. His appeal to crypto exchanges, however, included blocking “any interaction with sanctioned individuals”, apparently not all wallets of Russian citizens in the country or abroad.

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